


The Feast is Life

by RubyBakeneko



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Anal Fingering, Canon-Typical Violence, Dreams and Nightmares, Emotional Manipulation, Fantasy, First Time, Kissing, M/M, Magical Realism, Masturbation, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-06
Updated: 2017-11-06
Packaged: 2019-01-30 03:00:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12644796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RubyBakeneko/pseuds/RubyBakeneko
Summary: Following an impulsive purchase, Will begins to dream of a man who makes him feel less alone. In time, he realizes that these aren’t just dreams—they’re interactions with someone (or something) real. Hannibal offers Will the possibility of a life together, but it will come at a price.





	The Feast is Life

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first time I’ve attempted to add fantasy elements or creatures to a fic, and I’m not drawing from any specific mythology here. I’m just creating my own supernatural narrative (no doubt with many internal inconsistencies!) that weaves in various canon themes from the show. I'm also doped up on painkillers following an ankle injury, so apologies in advance for any influence that may have had!

Will is looking for secondhand furniture when the bronze deer first catches his eye. It’s a solid, richly detailed creature with an arched neck and open jaws, and Will isn’t sure why he picks it up. He just suddenly finds himself grasping it, testing its substantial weight. His hands are drawn to the texture and shape of it, running over its sharp antlers and muscular back. He slips a fingertip into the crease of its mouth, feels the cold of the metal begin to seep into his skin.

Once he’s holding it, he can’t put it down. A cardboard tag dangles from its front leg, and the spidery handwriting indicates a price that’s insultingly low for such a piece of craftsmanship. Will buys the statuette without another thought, stowing it in the back of his car along with a chipped coffee table and a rolled-up rug patterned with splashes of green and grey. The deer ends up sitting on his living room mantel, its tangible presence powerful and foreboding. It doesn’t look like it belongs in Will’s cluttered space with his dog-eared books and dog-haired couches, but it _feels_ like it belongs.

The night turns frosty and bitter, Will shivering under two woolen blankets. There’s liquid warmth in his stomach from the whiskey he drank before bed, but his feet are icy numb. His dogs form a companionable pile by the space heater, and he is soothed by the pack’s deep, steady breaths. He slips into sleep as he wraps the cocoon of his covers tight around his shoulders.

He dreams he is standing in a golden chapel, dazzled by the magnificence of its design. There’s a reverential quietness in the musty air, and a shadow moves at the corner of Will’s eye. His heart is racing, frantic, as though his body already understands something his mind does not.

Footsteps sound behind him, the tap of expensive shoes on hard stone. Will slowly turns, coming face to face with a man who looks as inhuman as he is beautiful. He is like something carved in marble, cool and precise.

Dark eyes flick up and down Will’s body, ending on his face. “Hello, Will.”

 _I know you_ , Will thinks, the conviction both irrational and automatic.

“Who are you?” he says instead.

The man’s lips curve upwards, a barely noticeable flicker that’s more of a twitch than a smile. “Hannibal.”

“Hannibal,” Will repeats, the name sitting heavy and inevitable on his tongue.

“Shall we sit?”

Two black leather chairs have appeared to their right, and Will feels irresistibly drawn to do as he is asked. They sit across from one another, an ornate skull emblazoned on the ground between them.

—

Their conversations continue nightly. Hannibal wants to discuss almost everything—self-knowledge and fulfillment, religion and fear, violence and art. It sometimes seems to Will that he’s genuinely learning things from Hannibal—things he supposes must just have been buried in the recesses of his memory all along. In spite of the general gravitas of their exchanges, Hannibal also offers a dry, understated wit, and Will finds himself unexpectedly delighted by it. It feels strange and joyful to laugh again, like he’s rejuvenating muscles that had atrophied.

The sense of mutual connection is a rush, the intellectual stimulation electric. It’s like falling in love, and his blood sings with it. He reminds himself that none of this is real, but in his most honest moments he’s aware that this barely matters to him. He craves the dreams, thrives in the vivid hyperreality of them more so than he does in the obligations of his teaching job or in the repetitive encounters he has with his tip-toeing colleagues.

“People are so careful with me,” he tells Hannibal. “They’re scared to damage me, or scared _of_ me. It’s absurd.”

“You are a force to be reckoned with,” Hannibal says.

“A force?” Will splutters, rubbing his forehead. “I’m an unstable teacher who was too peculiar to get past the FBI’s screening procedures. I have seven dogs, one smart jacket, and zero real friends.”

“Regardless, your mind is remarkable.”

Will snorts. “Yeah, well, you would say that. You’re a figment of my needy imagination.”

Hannibal doesn’t respond.

—

Mornings start to hurt, as though wakefulness rips Will in half each time. The loss is profound, and it impacts on his ability to do his job. If Hannibal existed, he would be a best friend. No, he would be a partner—the person with whom Will would want to spend his days, no matter what form that took. When they’re together, Will feels giddy and whole, blissfully known. Everything else seems dull in comparison. He is vacant and irritable, his lectures half-hearted and his conversational style even blunter than usual.

He’s vaguely aware that he’s wounding Alana Bloom, a colleague who once seemed so astute and lovely and yet is now barely capable of holding his interest for a few short minutes. He only really wants to be at home, these days. He wants to be able to think about what Hannibal has said, to be submerged in the illusion of being understood.

“I didn’t quite realize how alone I was—or how alone I am, I suppose,” Will says one night as he dreams of them sitting together in the foyer of the chapel once again.

Hannibal tilts his head. “We often can’t conceive of just how deprived we are until we are offered a glimpse of what we lack.”

“I need to get a grip. Find a way to address this problem, this loneliness,” Will pauses, pursing his lips. “I know you’re not really here. All this… it’s a symptom, not a cure.”

“Are you so sure that is what you know?”

Will jolts out of sleep, his skin tingling. His dogs are barking, restless and anxious, and he can’t shake the feeling that someone else is in the room. He recalls the elusive shadow he saw at the corner of his vision on the night he first met Hannibal.

“Hey, it’s okay,” Will soothes, getting up and walking toward the dogs. “Come on now.”

Buster snarls and Winston turns in a tight circle, his tail between his legs. Will has to speak several times before they appear to recognize his voice.

—

For the first time since the dreams started, Will begins to question what he thought he knew about the limits of possibility. The mere act of wondering about this makes him worry that he is losing his mind. How can he even consider that Hannibal might be real?

Nevertheless, he pushes forward with the only investigation he can think to conduct. He jots down some of the things that Hannibal has told him, facts he felt he heard for the first time. Armed with a notebook filled with two pages worth of scribbles, he spends the afternoon online. For every entry on his list, there is a corresponding citation somewhere—a scientific study, a piece of history or a philosophical theory. The more he reads, the more he becomes certain that he never really knew any of this information before this month. He knows plenty, but he didn’t previously know these specific things. 

After hours of research, he finds himself reaching the strangest conclusion: his dreams aren’t merely dreams. He’s making contact with someone—or some _thing_. And it has been happening ever since he brought the deer figurine into his house.

—

The next time Will meets Hannibal in the chapel, he doesn’t sit. Instead, he stands in front of Hannibal’s chair, staring down at him.

“So,” Will says. “You aren’t just in my imagination.”

Hannibal’s posture relaxes almost imperceptibly. Will has become accustomed to looking for these tiny movements—the little clues that betray Hannibal’s shifting emotions.

“No, I’m not,” Hannibal replies. “But that’s not something I could tell you. You had to see it for yourself.”

“You came with the ornament, somehow,” Will guesses, fumbling for an approximation of what he thinks has happened. “The bronze deer.”

“In a manner of speaking. But the deer has been in many homes, while I have not been granted access to so many minds.”

“The others…” Will trails off. He is acutely aware of his need to be special, to be different.

“Once or twice I would help someone find a way to live more authentically, to realize their dormant capacity for something greater,” Hannibal says. “But they never saw me. I would merely speak to them in their sleep, skirt around the edges of their consciousness.”

“And no one ever spoke back?”

“No. It would not be an exaggeration to say I was forever alone until I found you.”

“What are you?” Will whispers.

“There isn’t a name for what I am.”

“Can I… touch you?” Will asks, hesitant and breathless. It’s only when he says it that he realizes just how much he wants to.

Wordlessly, Hannibal stands, holding his palm up to face Will. Will’s body automatically mirrors the gesture, his pulse throbbing in his fingers as he anticipates Hannibal’s touch. But when he tries to press their palms together, his hand rushes through the air as though Hannibal is a hologram or a hallucination.

Will makes a noise of surprise and disappointment, cheeks flushing. He feels stupid.

“Not yet,” Hannibal says. “Soon, perhaps.”

—

Will’s shift in awareness somehow allows him to hear Hannibal in waking life, and the relief is enormous. Hannibal comments on Will’s surroundings, on his coworkers and the material covered in his lectures. Will chuckles to himself, ignoring the unnerved looks he receives. 

Alana approaches Will at the end of his last class for the day, frowning. “Are you okay?” she asks carefully, her silver bracelets jangling as one hand caresses Will’s upper arm. “You don’t seem… here.”

“A little over-familiar, Dr. Bloom,” Hannibal’s voice says in Will’s ear. It’s a warning, harsh and possessive, and Will jerks away.

“I’m fine,” he says, baring his teeth in more of a grimace than a smile. Alana doesn’t look convinced, and Will reads the transparent rejection and sadness on her face.

Hannibal is silent on the drive home, but he suddenly interrupts Will’s thoughts as he’s making an afternoon coffee. “Do you desire her?”

His words are as loud as they would be if Hannibal were standing directly behind him.

“Shit!” Will jumps, the mug slipping from his grasp and clattering into the sink.

“She cares for you, that much is obvious.”

“She’s a good person,” Will shrugs.

“A good person can’t give you what you need,” Hannibal says, and it’s almost a purr. “Nor what you deserve.”

Arousal thrums in Will’s veins. “What do I deserve?” he asks, cautious and eager at the same time.

“Worship. Gratification so profound that you lose yourself within it.”

“Hannibal…” Will’s eyes flicker shut for a second as he leans back against the counter, cock starting to stiffen in his slacks.

“Lie down,” Hannibal murmurs, and Will does. He unbuckles his belt and pushes his pants and boxers down to his thighs, exhilerated by the thought of being guided in this way. He's half hard from the mere sound of Hannibal.

“Touch yourself.”

Will swallow audibly and wraps a hand around his dick. He pumps it slowly, feeling it swell in his fist. He pictures Hannibal naked and animal on top of him, perfect hair askew and thick cock rubbing a slick trail against Will’s stomach.

“You are beautiful,” Hannibal says, sinful and hungry. “How I would love to taste you.”

“You voice, _god_ , it’s—” Will gasps, his grip tightening.

“Open yourself up, Will. Think about me.”

Will sucks two of his fingers to wet them, then reaches between his legs and gradually slides them into his body, his feet flat on the bed. In Will’s mind, it’s Hannibal inside him, their bodies entwined.

His back arches, toes curling as he jerks himself off with increasing urgency. “Fuck me,” he pants, delirious with pleasure, spreading his legs wider and pushing his fingers deeper inside himself. He can almost feel Hannibal’s touch, strong hands gripping Will’s hips and gentle lips caressing his neck, hot breath against his ear. 

Hannibal whispers praise laced with filth, words of affection and lust dripping from his tongue. Will imagines Hannibal thrusting into him hard and fast, driving whimpers and desperate pleas from his aching body.

“That’s it,” Hannibal coaxes. “Let go for me.”

Will moans and writhes in his bed, sweating and flushed. He comes with breathtaking force, pulsing in his hand and spurting onto his chest.

He carelessly rubs at his torso with his shirt and then tosses it away as he rolls onto his side. He is spent and sated—empty and full at the same time. Hannibal soothes him to sleep with quiet humming. It’s a melody in a minor key, but to Will it sounds like a lullaby.

—

Will stands at the window later that day, looking out across the frosty grass that surrounds his house. His breath fogs the glass, giving him the urge to write something on it.

“This isn’t enough,” he says, but there’s only silence. “Hannibal?” 

He feels nauseated and panicky—unmoored by the fear of Hannibal’s absence.

“I’m here,” Hannibal says softly, raising the hairs on the back of Will’s neck.

“I can’t take this. Not being able to see you unless I’m asleep, not being able to touch you at all. It’s too much. You said ‘soon’—was that true? I don’t see how that’s even possible.”

Hannibal pauses. “It’s possible.”

“How?” he asks. He has the sense that Hannibal is weighing his words carefully.

“I need you to feed me, Will,” Hannibal says finally.

“Feed you?”

“If you feed me, we can be together. I can be with you.”

“How do I do that?”

In his mind’s eye, he can imagine Hannibal’s slow smile, can see the tip of his tongue running over his bottom lip.

—

It isn’t as difficult as Will thought it would be—or, rather, it is not as difficult as he hoped it would be. He considers how and when to choose a victim, then quickly reframes the issue. _This isn’t about finding a victim_ , he tells himself. _It’s about finding someone who deserves to die_.

Predictably, he picks an animal abuser. The perpetrator’s name is printed in the local paper after he gets nothing but a paltry fine and brief community service. He’s easy enough to find—in the end, Will doesn’t even have to abuse his credentials at the FBI academy. He stalks his target over the course of a week, learning his routines and habits, planning meticulously. When he grabs the man outside a bar, clapping a hand over his mouth and sinking a syringe into the pliant flesh of his neck, the words _too easy_ ring out in Will’s head. He can’t tell if it’s Hannibal’s voice or his own.

With considerable effort, he drags the unconscious man from the car to the house, the dogs all staring at the limp feet dragging across the floor. Will hauls him up to the bathroom, pushing him into the bathtub where it will be easier to clean up.

As Will finally reaches for the knife in his pocket, the enormity of the situation hits him full force. He hesitates. This is something that can never be undone.

“You have to.”

Will whips around, wild-eyed, almost expecting to see Hannibal standing before him.

“What if I don’t?” he asks, fingers twitching at his side.

“Then we will never share the life you want,” Hannibal’s voice says. 

Will makes a frustrated grunt and scrubs a hand across his face.

“You must kill for me, Will, or I can never be with you,” Hannibal repeats.

“Now?”

“Now,” he hears Hannibal say, and then Will is lunging forward and slicing the knife across the man’s throat, watching blood soak through clothing and then gradually start to pool on the white porcelain of the bath. His heart thuds heavy and slow, his head buzzing. A cruel part of him almost wishes that he could have seen the terror and understanding in the man’s eyes before death. _There’s always next time_. 

A drop of blood drips down the smooth surface of his knife and hits the floor, running into the crack between tiles. Will is frozen, looking at the motionless body for what could be minutes or hours. When he finally glances away, he thinks for a split second that he can see his shaking hands turning black.

Frightened, he backs out of the room, sinking down onto the carpet in the hallway. He sits with his back against the wall and his knees drawn up to his chest. He had wondered if he might see Hannibal feed somehow, but the reality is much quieter and less dramatic—he simply senses a subtle but blissful narrowing of the gap between them. He feels Hannibal’s presence shimmering in the air around him. _This was a sacrifice to him_ , Will thinks.

“Do you feel better?” he asks faintly, eyes closing.

“I feel closer to you,” Hannibal says.

“And that’s better.”

“Yes.”

Will smiles—a slow, soft thing, incongruously bashful given that he’s sitting a few feet away from a corpse. He thinks back to the moment he first drew blood, his smile replaced by a cold flutter of shame. “I liked it,” he admits.

Hannibal understands. “It’s a heady thing, to hold fate in the palm of your hand.”

Will swallows thickly. “I felt powerful.”

“You are powerful,” Hannibal says, fiercely proud.

—

The next thing Will knows, he’s in the foyer of the chapel. It’s like the feeling of disorientation that he has experienced after fainting, though he is apparently on his feet right now. He wobbles, dizzy. Hannibal is beside him, as striking and poised as ever in a red and grey suit. There’s color in his cheeks.

“Did I fall asleep?” Will squints, blinking rapidly. “Oh, shit, I have to—”

“There is nothing more you have to do,” Hannibal says calmly.

“That’s easy for you to say—you didn’t leave a corpse in your bathroom.”

“That’s immaterial now.”

Will scowls, exasperated. “What do you mean? What is the… oh,” he stops abruptly. The pieces slot into place in his mind, and he suddenly feels so naïve. So foolish.

“See?” Hannibal asks quietly.

Will clenches his fists. “Am I… am I like you now? Am I trapped here?” He knows it’s true before he even asks.

“We will live here, together,” Hannibal says.

“Here?”

“There is plenty for you to explore beyond this building. My world is vast.”

“That is not the point,” Will hisses.

“Ah. You thought we would live in your world.”

Will shakes his head, incensed. “You let me believe that we would. You _let me believe_ you could join me.”

“Only by sins of omission, one might say,” Hannibal says. “You believed what you wanted to believe. I had rather hoped that—”

“Just don’t,” Will pleads, walking toward the door. His eyes sting and his chest aches.

—

Will finds his own rooms, his own places in Hannibal’s realm—their realm now, he supposes. He locks the doors and spends long days drowning in torturous introspection, rage and guilt. Had he always known, deep down, that he would become something like Hannibal? Something that warps and steers the desires of the vulnerable, something that needs to feed on _life_? Beneath his raw indignance, there is a twisted knot of shame. And beneath the shame, there is a tiny, secret spark of gratitude.

On the sixth day, he emerges and finds Hannibal standing in the same place, patient and still as a sculpture. “This will get easier,” he assures Will.

“I worry that it’ll be too easy.”

“Then we will deal with that as well.”

Will swallows. “Okay.”

“You can touch me now,” Hannibal reminds him.

He grabs Hannibal by the shoulders and kisses him, finds his mouth firm and dry. Will’s lips part, his need spilling over. He licks into Hannibal’s mouth, clinging to his jacket and pressing their hips together. _I am home_ , Will thinks.

Time blurs as they undress each other with greedy hands, solid and real. And as Will wraps his legs around Hannibal’s back and takes him deep into his body, he wonders if he will ever tire of this, if he will ever stop wanting more, _more_. He feels as though he is the one who now needs to be fed.

—

Will’s disappearance is a mystery, and his blatant homicide earns him a top spot on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list. Rumors and theories about his fragile mental state begin to circulate, some of his colleagues asking themselves how they could have missed the signs that Will would one day snap. Others claim they always knew he would.

Alana adopts his dogs, no longer confident in the accuracy of her own judgment. She had fancied, once, that Will could be someone she might love. If he had been, would she have been the one found lifeless in his bathtub? Some days, she still rages against the unfairness of it all, burying her face in Winston’s back and sobbing into his glossy fur. In time, she sees to it that many of Will’s belongings become charitable contributions—she argues that something good might as well come from this miserable situation.

His paintings and ornaments make their way to a psychiatric facility that specializes in the treatment of trauma in minors, where the bronze deer figurine catches the attention of a recently orphaned teen. It sits high on a shelf, and the girl finds herself staring at it every day.

“Can I take it into my room?” she asks, moved by an eagerness she doesn’t understand. Her therapist hesitates and explains that she can’t—it’s a potential weapon, one with which the girl could harm herself or others. It must stay in the communal, supervised area. A week passes by and she takes the deer anyway, confident that no one will notice. She hides it in a drawer beneath her sweaters, lifts it out and runs her fingers over its face at night.

Unseen and unheard, Will and Hannibal watch the girl as she studies and learns, deliberates and experiments. They see her manipulate staff, sometimes to her noticeable gain and occasionally just to test her limits. She is bright and brave, fierce in the face of the obvious harm done to her, and her untapped potential radiates from her in waves.

“In another life, perhaps we could have been her fathers,” Hannibal says, and something at the very core of Will comes alive at the thought.

“Can we go to her?” he asks. He knows that he’s playing directly into Hannibal’s hands. He doesn’t care.

Hannibal teaches Will how to join him in pulling the sleeping girl’s consciousness into a cozy living room in their world. They offer her safety and guidance in her dreams, speaking to her in more real and meaningful terms than any of her doctors or guardians have. She relaxes in the warm embrace of Will’s empathy, flourishes as Hannibal challenges her to grow in her thinking.

“I know these are only dreams,” she says as gleaming tears well up and threaten to fall. “But it feels so good to have this. I’ve never had anything that was mine—not really. It was always fake.”

Will takes a deep breath, letting it out in a long sigh. These are all too familiar words, describing all too familiar sentiments. The girl flops onto an armchair, dejected, and Will lingers behind Hannibal as they stand before her.

“You can be with us,” Hannibal says. He is a deceptively tender presence, the picture of earnest and noble affection. “We can be your family.”

“I can?”

Will steps forward, finally. He kneels down on the floor and stares into her shining eyes. “Yes, you can, Abigail,” he says. “There’s just one thing you need to do.”


End file.
